Verdict:
A significant update with impressive new features that save time and boost creativity. Expensive, but nothing else comes close.
Review Date: 12 Apr 2010
Price when reviewed: £644
Supplier: http://www.adobe.com/uk
Review
At a time when most creative software seems to be stuck in a rut, Photoshop CS5 comes as a bit of a surprise. It’s packed with startlingly impressive new features, some of which herald a significant leap for the sophistication of image-editingsoftware. Considering that Photoshop CS4 was already so mature, elegant and stacked to the rafters with powerful features, this update exceeds our highest expectations.
Before we get too carried away, let’s take a look at the more down-to-Earth improvements. Photoshop is now available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions; we measured a performance boost of up to 40 per cent when comparing the two versions on a Windows 7 64-bit PC with 8GB RAM, although some tests only showed a six per cent increase.
RAW processing benefits from more sophisticated noise reduction. Lens correction includes automatic correction of distortions, chromatic aberrations and vignetting, all calculated by referencing photos’ EXIF data against profiles for various SLR lenses. The profile database is currently pretty small but that should improve with time. A new Mixer Brush delivers an interesting hybrid between painting and smudging, and works well with the new Bristle Tips, which emulate a variety of natural paintbrush shapes.
The most impressive new feature is Content-Aware Fill, which crops up as an innocuous looking button in the Spot Healing Brush’s options. This brush was already invaluable for removing dust spots, bits of rubbish and skin blemishes, pasting the texture from a nearby area and colour-matching it to its new surroundings.
However, it struggled when the offending item was large or spanned two distinct background textures. Now, selecting the Content-Aware button makes more intelligent decisions about what to fill the space with. It wasn’t smart enough to preserve structured geometric shapes and patterns, but in most cases it produced photo-realistic results that previously required lengthy manual cloning techniques.
Content-Aware Fill can also be invoked by selecting an area of the background layer and hitting Delete. Rather replacing the selected area with a block colour, the software fills it in by cloning from various other parts of the image. Its effectiveness is highly dependent on the material being edited – it nearly always messed up with man-made objects, for example, although it had a reasonable stab at extrapolating straight lines. For natural environments, the results were often astonishingly effective.
Another dramatic timesaver is Photoshop’s improved ability to isolate objects from their backgrounds. Cutting out complex shapes is a chore, particularly when hair or other textured edges are concerned. The new Edge Detection and Decontaminate Colors options in the Refine Edge dialog box produced sharp lines and soft edges as necessary, and even picked out strands of hair with impressive accuracy.
The improved ability to cut out objects is perfect fodder for the new Puppet Warp tool. It imposes a wireframe mesh onto objects, which is stretched and skewed by adding and dragging pins. Unlike the existing Liquify tool, which shifts pixels around using brush strokes, Puppet Warp takes a more structured approach that resembles manipulating physical objects. As such, it’s ideal for subtly altering the pose of an arm or leg while maintaining photo-realism. It’s also extremely useful for more extreme manipulations of less recognisable objects, or for breaking up the regimented appearance of text.
Professional users shouldn’t hesitate to upgrade to Photoshop CS5, but home users will need some convincing to choose it over the much more affordable – and highly capable – Photoshop Elements. The new features mentioned above are certainly compelling, and we’d be surprised to find them filtering down to Elements any time soon. Another crucial difference is Photoshop CS5’s support for layer masks, a non-destructive tool for making layers partially visible. After using masks for design tasks, it’s hard to imagine living without them.
Overall, Elements feels like a place for fun creative projects, whereas Photoshop CS5 is more an elegant, highly efficient creative tool. For amateur photographers and designers who are motivated more by their own ideas than their software’s features, it’s money well spent.
Author: Brad Cross
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Part Code Photoshop CS5 Review Date 12 Apr 2010 Price £644 Details www.adobe.com/uk Rating
